Caring for the environment on a daily basis and not just on world environment day

World Environment Day @ Radio Active

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Radio Active marked World Environment Day (held on 5 June every year) by inviting some of the most passionate environmentalists and environment activists to share personal stories of change-making and to highlight the importance of the day.

When Padma Priya introduced the topic stating that conservation of forests and wildlife is important and needs to be addressed, Padma Ashok went on to speak a little more about the term ‘Parisara’: “When people think of nature they think of silence, fresh air and that makes them think of hill stations or forests – that is what we think is ‘parisara’. But, where we stay and what is in our surroundings constitutes the environment as well! We need to think that today we are living in a polluted environment.”

“From a garden city, Bengaluru is fast becoming a concrete jungle. If we conserve the environment we are living in, we can also automatically take care of other aspects of environment including forests and wildlife. Everything needs to be in balance.”

Listen on to know more

RJ Vijaya spoke with Vijay Nishanth, an urban conservationist and animal activist, who is the co-founder of Project Vruksha and a vociferous promoter of tree transplantation as a conservation tool. He is popularly known as the ‘Tree Doctor’.

Vijay shares a little about the theme for this year as specified by the United Nations which is ‘Connecting people to Nature’ with Canada being the host for this year. People of the host country usually involve themselves in various activities like cleaning the environment nearby, planting saplings, etc. The idea is to keep our environs clean.

Vijay talks about the time when Suresh Heblikar (Kannada filmmaker, director, actor, and an environmentalist), the founder of Eco-Watch, had visited his school to deliver a lecture on environment protection and how his interest for sustainability multiplied after that speech.

He goes on to talk about how people are staying indoors a lot these days due to factors like urbanization and work pressure. They are not connecting to nature and a gap is growing between people and nature. The idea of this year is to draw people to the outdoors and into the lap of nature and our environment. He then talks about various ways of conservation (using, not abusing), and other things.

RJ Priyanka spoke with Manjunath Pattegar, Narasimaiah, and Ravindra R Gowda from the Miditha Foundation. They highlighted the simple formula they preach to make the planet greener which is: “Our aim is to visit every house in every ward of Bengaluru and encourage people to plant at least one plant in their homes.”

Listen in to hear about the challenges they have faced, how people have responded to their campaign and how they are trying to protect and plant more trees in Bengaluru and nearby areas.

RJ Padma spoke with Dr. Umesh who is the adopted son of the renowned Saalumarada Thimmakka.

A nature lover and winner of Karnataka Rajya Parisara Prashathi, Umesh shares about his life with plants and trees. He also shares about how Saalumarada Thimmakka has influenced his life and the lives of many others.